Sergio Zavattieri
Extract from the catalogue Archivio SACS – RISO 2009-2011 by Helga Marsala, 2011
The formal perfectionism and lucid attention to technical details that pervade Sergio Zavattieri’s work do not exclude the ability to trasmit moving beauty, a magic aura, and an enchanting lyricism to his photographs. His subjects are so complete there is no room for error, improvisation, imprecision, or rough prose. Even in the planning stages, in the concepition and mounting of sets, and on the plane of the actual photographic image, Zavattieri’s work is informed by a certain classicism, an absolutes aesthetic realm. All of this translates, surprisingly, into visual warmth, into an emocional physically that captures the eye, pinning it to an enternalized image, entrusted to a granitic yet extremley human sense of time.
Every shot hides constant play with the ambiguity of vision. Take, for exemple, the photographs of the Botanica series, in which the splendid flowers done in a Metallica, tecnological, Black-and-white are actually nothing more than common plastic objects, artificial plantsthat have been photographed with refined tecniques and resuscitated in new organic form. Zavattieri’s photographs are highly rigorous but full of “Boise” and atmosphere, like nostalgic documents pulled out of a forgotten drawer or off the shelves in an old archive.